Vancouver students take their plastic-eating bacteria ideas to the stage at TED

Miranda Wang (L) and Jeanny Yao hold up culture plates from their national science award project uncovering soil bacteria which can break down potentially harmful pollutants Wednesday, May 02, 2012 in Vancouver, B.C.

Photograph by: Ian Lindsay
, PNG

LONG BEACH - If Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao want to continue pursuing their search for how to make plastic decompose using natural bacteria, they came to the right place, the TED 2013 conference.

Speaking to a packed audience of venture capitalists, scientists, philanthropists and people used to funding innovative research, the two Vancouver students explained how, on just a whim, they discovered bacteria in the Fraser River capable of destroying plastics.

The Magee Secondary School graduates, who are now attending universities in Montreal and Toronto, took to the stage at the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference to explain a discovery that has so far eluded many bright minds.

They were two of four Canadian speakers Wednesday who were invited to share their bright ideas with nearly 1,400 TED attendees. Vancouver architect Michael Green, a fierce proponent of tall wood skyscrapers, and Montreal filmmaker Martin Villeneuve also spoke.

Wang and Yao last year won the British Columbia Regional Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada competition for their discovery that some bacteria, when properly fed on a specific diet, can be cultured to target the base chemicals that make up plastics. Some universities are doing similar research, but the two girls undertook their project out of a simple view they wanted to learn something outside a structured classroom environment. In doing so they unwittingly advanced the search for plastics-destroying microbes.

Wang and Yao, both 18, were in good company among young scientists talking at TED about groundbreaking research. Jack Andraka, a Maryland freshman, revealed how he had discovered and then patented a paper cancer detector with a high rate of success. And 18-year-old Taylor Wilson, who spoke at TED several years ago about how he built a nuclear reactor in his family garage, was back to explain how he's developed a small commercial-grade nuclear reactor using spent fuel rods that he believes can be used to produce power in developing countries.

This was also a day about green technology, with Green explaining how his proposal for wooden towers as tall as 30 storeys will act as a carbon sink to help slow climate change. He invented a form of "mass wood" panels that are structurally as strong as steel and concrete.

His talk was preceded by another green building proponent, Alastair Parvin, whose team developed "WikiHouse", a formulaic system that takes simple house designs and produces parts that can be assembled easily without special tools or experience. The concept allows for rapid construction of housing in developing countries. Both Parvin and Green's technologies are being made available to the world for free through Creative Commons licenses.

Villeneuve, the first Quebecois to appear at TED, produced the critically-acclaimed Mars et Avril, a French-language science fiction film that, strikingly, was not well received in Quebec but did well elsewhere.

He was recruited to speak after TED curator Chris Anderson watched the film at a film festival in Whistler in December.

Yao and Wang say they haven't pursued further the research they pioneered on the Fraser River bacteria because they are now attending university and are working on other projects. But in an interview Wang said she hopes to come back to the bacteria project after concluding work she is doing with the National Research Council on another pollution-fighting project.

Wang and Yao's research focussed on phthalates, a fossil fuel-based additive and known carcinogen found in some plastics. The plasticizer is used in a large range of products to which people have a high exposure, such as foot wraps, beverage containers and food wraps.

"Phthalates are horrible because they are so easily taken into our bodies. They can be absorbed by skin contact, ingested and absorbed," Wang told the audience.

The two girls identified bacteria from two sites along the Fraser River with varying concentrations of phthalates: the Richmond landfill and the Reifel bird sanctuary.

With assistance from University of B.C. professor Lindsay Eltis, they isolated 14 different strains of bacteria, and then cultured several to feed on a phthalate-enriched diet. They were stunned to find they could convince the bacteria to target the chemical to the exclusion of other food sources.

"This led us to conclude that our bacteria doesn't only grow in a macroscopic culture that has phthalates as a sole carbon source, but is genetically capable of breaking down phthalates. It actually has a genetic pathway to create enzymes that can degrade phthalates," Wang said.

"Although we're not the first ones to find that bacteria can break down phthalates, we were the first ones to look into our local river and find a possible solution to a local problem," Yao told the audience. "We have not only shown that bacteria can be the solution to plastic pollution, but that also being open to uncertain outcomes and taking risks create opportunities for unexpected discoveries."

Wang said she and Yao were mildly intimidated by the other bright young scientists appearing at TED.

"Jeanny and I know that our research is still at a very beginning stage. I know there are a lot of science kids there who have already gotten patents, who are doing a lot of things with vaccines . . . We are not as far down the road as they are. So the message Jeanny and I want to deliver at TED is that we want to encourage people of our age and older than us to be be willing to take on journeys that don't necessarily have a certain ending to them.

"Every single day we hear on the news about the dire, about massive oil spills in the ocean and terrible things. It makes you feel like the small things you do on a daily basis are great but still insufficient."

Wang is now working on a project with the National Research Council in Montreal looking at bacteria that can break down oil pollution in Alberta's tar sands.

Wang said the two friends didn't expect this discovery would also lead them to California.

"When Jeanny and I took on this journey we didn't know this would take us to TED. We just wanted to see if we could learn something beyond the high school classroom," she said.

In his talk, Green explained that tall wood buildings, rather than leading to increased deforestation, could actually become the source of a new agricultural commodity. Low-quality wood is crushed and formed into long panels up to 64 feet long and 12 inches wide.

"It is incredibly important that as I speak about using wood in buildings the other side is coin is to make sure that we cut trees down in a responsible way," he said in an interview.

"I have a pretty compelling position on this. Deforestation is about 18 per cent of man's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. But buildings contribute to much more. We're not talking about cutting down old growth trees but rapidly-growing low quality trees that when young soak up carbon much faster.

"Most importantly, we can change the land value in countries that cut down trees. There is no incentive to replant the forest. Our story is that you create value in your rapid-growth forest. We're turning forestry into a form of farming," he explained. "I don't want to oversimplify. But we are creating incentives for reforestation for which we've never had a tool for before. We're actually saying you are going to make more money on a crop of trees than you are on a crop of agriculture."

British Columbia recently amended its building code to allow for wooden residential buildings up to six storeys tall. It is working on changing the code to allow 10-storey towers within five years. Canada's national building code is about five years behind but is also being modified to allow for this new kind of construction, according to the Canadian Wood Council.

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